Effective communication is critical for successful business and personal life. The desire to enhance communication, in conjunction with rapid advances in processing technology, have lead to new and effective communication systems. For example, voice messaging services no longer simply accept messages for later retrieval. Instead, voice messaging services pro-actively place calls to subscribers in order to inform the subscriber that a message awaits retrieval. This messaging service feature is often referred to as “outcalling.”
Outcalling configuration options in voice messaging systems provide the subscriber with a certain degree of control over the outcalling service. In some cases, the configuration options required the subscriber to explicitly specify a message delivery schedule, an outcalling contact number (e.g., a cell phone number or other voice capable device address), and a message preference (e.g., perform outcalling only for ‘Urgent’ messages). Once activated, the outcalling process repeatedly called the subscriber (e.g., every hour) until the subscriber explicitly acknowledged message receipt or retrieved the message.
Outcalling consumes valuable, limited, resources. Each time the messaging system places a call to the subscriber, the messaging system consumes a portion of those limited resources. As examples, each outcall may consume processor time, network bandwidth, physical channel (e.g., TDMA time slot) capacity, and other resources. Nevertheless, as noted above, prior voice messaging systems often blindly repeated outcalling attempts to a subscriber, with each attempt often wasting valuable channel resources.
A need has long existed for improved outcalling for voice messaging services.